Exhibitions/Events

Cerritos College Art Gallery is pleased to announce the selected artists/proposals for the upcoming Spring 2018 Window Dressing exhibition. Each artist will present a week-long installation in the gallery's display window vitrine on the exterior of the Cerritos College Fine Art building, with an opening reception taking place on the first day of each exhibition (Mondays) from 4-6PM. Curated by James MacDevitt.

Jackie Bell Johnson’s installation, Starburst, will create a literal burst of light and color within the vitrine space of the display gallery. The floating abstract pattern will be made of woven fabric – specifically cheesecloth, dyed shades of red, coral, orange, and red - lit to cast shadows and illuminate the color of the material. The material is thin, and when lit, it will look like it glows. Cut into long, thin strips, the fabric will be attached to the corner wall and then will be stretched out to the far ends of the space. The result will be a delicate, intricate pattern in cast shadows on the interior wall, mingling with the illuminated fabric.

Noot will create an installation playing off of traditional window displays, featuring drawings turned into standing cutouts and hanging pieces. The installation, entitled Meat Market, will link masculinity and the body to the buying/selling, hunting, and eating of meat. Men will be morphed into animal-human hybrids frolicking and eating one another. Rendered in the style of children's coloring books, the drawings will be playful despite depicting horrific scenes of semi-cannibalism. By having animalistic men interacting together, the installation will play into contemporary themes of identity, sexual orientation (without didactic explicitness), and objectification. The artist will specifically draw from his rural background combined in unexpected ways with his self-identification as a gay male artist.

Diane Williams’ installation, Beautiful Creatures, will mimic the stereotypical presentation of commercial storefront displays, but with a surreal twist. The featured objects on display will be pulled from a previous project entitled Monsters and Aliens, which involved the creation of abstract masks, monstrous (self-)portraits, made out of shredded paintings and other discarded materials. The masks will be placed on mannequins and custom-made stands, combined with shredded acrylic paintings scattered on the floor and cut-up gel rolls hanging from the ceiling. These materials are semi-translucent, diffusing light in a pleasant aesthetic amalgamation, and obscuring the masked female object, subverting the way we are conditioned to see the unfamiliar as only-ever the frightening ‘Other’ - the outsider, the monster, the alien – replaced instead by fascinating, beautiful creatures.

Paula Goldman BLUSTER Feb 26 – Mar 2, 2018

Paul Goldman’s installation, Bluster, will reference the overwhelming onslaught of current events, while attempting to provide some partial relief by literally ‘blowing the news away.’ On the far left side of the vitrine will be a very large photo of a woman’s face in profile, posed as if she were blowing out candles. Spread across the length of the interior wall will be full-page spreads pulled from current news publications. Brightly colored streamers will be suspended from the ceiling throughout the vitrine and a small fan will be positioned in the left end of the space, aimed at the streamers and blowing in the same direction as the subject in the photograph, creating the illusion that the giant head is sharply exhaling. The wrap-around area of the vitrine will be filled with crumpled newspapers, the accumulated and littered remains of previous attempts to blow away the trauma caused by contemporary media coverage of current events.

For Henderson Blumer and Suzanne Zoe’s joint project, A Comedy, in Parts, the installation will play with the idea of "window dressing" as a façade meant to bring you in, a seduction, a mirage, a setting of the stage. Indeed, a proscenium stage often functions similarly to a window display (both architecturally and formally). The artists’ will explicitly take advantage of the fact that the site can be viewed from both very far away and incredibly close up, creating a stage set that changes drastically depending on the viewing angle. In contrast to the experience of a traditional window dressing, the closer the viewer gets to this installation, the more confused they will become. Through theatrical optical illusion, changes in scale, lighting, and other techniques, the artists will create a set piece that invites closer inspection, but refuses to fully satisfy. Where the scene may look lush and inviting from afar, up close it will become oddly flat. A forest will reveal itself to be a painted mirror. Miniatures and dummies will be placed next to life-sized actors. The set will be activated by one performance, to take place during the opening. But for the duration of the installation, the structure itself will provide multiple viewing experiences. Rather than merely tantalize the viewers like the windows on 5th Avenue, this project will put impossible, incongruous demands on the brain. And yet one will not be able to look away. The installation will play with themes of real vs. fake, as well as the tension that arises from trying to reconcile multiple, simultaneous realities. Visual references throughout the installation will include Calder's Circus, movies such as Dogville and Synecdoche New York, and dioramas at The Natural History Museum.

The installation, Journey, created jointly by John Waiblinger and Sean Yang, proposes to narrate and navigate the process of ‘coming-out’ that both artists have experienced personally, focusing on the desire for tender connections between two men as well as the journey toward, and away from, the self-actualization of a fully-realized sexual identity. The first element of the installation will be a headless and armless male mannequin, unable to embrace his true self (and, therefore, anyone else), surrounded by a low, semi-broken cinderblock barrier representing the space of "blockage/closet/suppression." Around the corner from the mannequin will be a sculpture of an "exploding head" of tangled thoughts and emotions extended via red elastic bands to all of the other elements in the installation, including to five hanging images printed on gauzy silk, representing idealized types of tender embrace/love/connection between men. The final component, a golden hued, life-sized bust of the artist Sean Yang on a pedestal, wrapped in a silk printed image, represents the figure of the self-actualized ‘out’ gay man, however, a red band still connects the pedestal to the exploding head, informing the viewer that this is not a final destination or one-time stop, but rather a continuous circle and a journey that must be traveled repeatedly.

Cat Chiu Phillips REMIX Mar 26 – Mar 30, 2018

Cat Chiu Phillips’ installation, Remix, entirely created from discarded audio and visual products, will be a playful take in handling the inevitability of technology. VHS tapes, cassette tapes, slide projectors, and other modes of technology have quickly become outdated items; casted off and found in scrap piles or second hand stores. Remix is a project that transforms these obsolete materials into a playful and imaginative abstract work, but offers a perspective of its foreseeable futile existence. It is an up-cycled project that juxtaposes the hand-made to the machine-made and transforms junk into an aesthetic item. It initiates a dialogue regarding abundance, electronic waste, and frivolity in the aftermath of advanced technology. All items will be deconstructed then transformed to mimic organic forms, composed to inhabit the window as living entities. Traditional handicraft methods such as crocheting and weaving will be utilized to capture the seemingly freeform movement of the synthetic material.

Inspired by the intersection of didactic stained glass windows and the foundations of design education, Christy Roberts Berkowitz’s installation, Elemental Principles, uses the elements and principles of design to ask questions about the nature of community. Art and design classes at Cerritos College, will engage with the blank, but colorfully lit back walls, to create images that attempt to answer a series of provocative questions such as: “What is the shape of the future? Who draws the line? How do you balance the sky? How does community move?” The windows of the display gallery will be covered with translucent color panels. Each window panel will ask a question that integrates the elements and principles of design with critical thinking questions about the nature of community. The questions function as a prompt to create images that attempt to answer these questions and as the week progresses, students can place their own work on the blank wall space behind each colorful panel. The work functions collaboratively because not only are the students challenged with responding to the prompt, but they are also challenged with responding to the color of the window and the lighting.

Elizabeth Tinglof’s installation, A Thin Thread to Balance, will address the process of grief through conversations around gender, exposure, and symbolic penance. The primary sculpture within the installation will be an abstracted human torso made of resin and covered in areas with silver leaf, giving a contrast through the materials of the precious and the toxic, attached to a traditional dressmaking mannequin stand surrounded by a wire “cage crinoline.” The steel hoop-style petticoat made of wire has been part of the Western-world’s fashion-profile for women since the 1850s and continues to be used in contemporary designs, including wedding and ball gowns. By displaying such an iconic fashion element for women, directly connected to the raw and disturbing torso, the observer will both be drawn in for a closer look while also being equally repelled. In addition to the main sculptural piece, an intricate, twisted wire element will emanate from the back of the torso, stretching from one end of the space to the other, climbing up the walls to the ceiling creating a vine-like quality. While the wire element will be intrusive to the space, there will also be a performative aspect to this element, where the artist will continue to build up the wire vines; twisting, shaping and allowing them to grow throughout the week of the exhibition, illustrating the never-ending process of grief itself. The expansive wire vine symbolizes the destructive nature of the “wild vine,” while also showing growth though the performative penitent act of the laborious twisting and shaping of wire. Combining the symbolic object with the self creates a duality to the exposure and speaks to penance not so much as a Judaea-Christian definition, but one more connected to Indian religious traditions, where the term changes from penance to “tapas,” focusing more on enlightenment then the ritualistic restaging of pain and struggle.

Connie DK Lane BRAVURA Apr 16 – Apr 20, 2018

For Connie DK Lane’s installation, Bravura, a large number of hand-made anthropomorphic forms made out of latex rubber, a simulation of apparels for all genders, will be displayed throughout the window case. Bamboo support devices will be constructed to display some of the forms; whereas, others will be hung from the ceiling or attached to the wall. In addition to dressing the window, I intend to have a live fashion show performed on the reception date. Students and audience-members will be invited to serve as models; they will put on the unique latex clothing forms and walk along inside the window passageway.

>Recent:

I will be showing new ceramic sculptures and lino cut block prints at the Mothers Market Gallery at the Brewery Artwalk, happening on October 21 and 22, 11:00am to 6:00pm both days. My work will be shown alongside some amazing artists: Ashira Siegel, Sarah Supermith Bulock, and Alia Ollikainen Joslin.

>Progress Gallery in the Pomona Arts Colony presents:"Peak and Ground of Creativity"

Creative expression freed from pragmatic concerns and strict realism does not become arbitrary or meaningless ornamentation. On the contrary, artistic vision unencumbered by surface interpretation reflects an undertaking to penetrate the limitations of conceptual perception such that more foundational and holistic layers of reality can be examined, embodied, and expressed. This freedom of creative expression seeks to find new forms of visual language that can more authentically communicate existential, metaphysical, and spiritual insights without restriction to narrative and literal representation.

From a nondual perspective, what abides underneath surface perception is neither a disconnected nor sterile emptiness but rather can be recognized to be an inseparable ground of creativity from which new forms of awareness, existence, and expression can arise.

The visual artists in this exhibit, coming from different backgrounds, present their own unique visions of heightened consciousness that encompasses yet is not reducible to the limitations of subjective experience. Through their creative expressions, they aspire to question the known and familiar in conceptual perception in order to spark a spontaneous opening of the mind, thus making accessible an extended range of consciousness, existence and meaning.